Classic Review: Clerks (1994)

The charm of Clerks comes down to its day-to-day observations, the interactions between long-time friends and acquaintances newly made every day. More than anything else, the film captures the mundanity of days going by, and how easy it is to lose track of how fast time is going by. In the now, it’s easy to feel stuck in a single setting or moment. But even its slacker characters aren’t achieving high hopes and dreams, they’re in a place that they feel comfortable in. Additionally, it is a great character study in how slackers spend their downtime, and even get creative doing it.

Clerks starts off as a day in the lives of two convenience clerks living in New Jersey, Dante (O’Halloran) and Randal (Anderson) as they annoy customers, discuss movies, and play hockey on the store roof. The former is called in to cover a shift on his day off, while the latter helps him pass the time, neglecting his video-store customers next door to hang out in the Quick Stop. The uneventful day is disrupted by news that one of Dante’s ex-girlfriends has died. After attending her memorial service, Dante muses over staying with current girlfriend Veronica (Ghigliotti) or reuniting with ex Caitlin (Lisa Spoonhauer).

Despite appearing to be about nothing, there is actually quite a lot going on here. Whether or not that was Smith’s intention is up to interpretation. But one can tell after spending enough time with these characters that they would ideally like to be in the most accomplished position they could be, but are settling for ‘lesser’ out of a sense of self-defeat. At least that’s one way the text could be read. Alternately, it all is really as simple as it appears. The wonderful thing is that these characters are so complex and full of inner life. Though they can be obnoxious, viewers want to know more about them.

Another piece of context is how the film is steeped is in 90’s irony. It captures the general zeitgeist and apathy of its generation almost to a fault, representing all the typical grunge-obsessed, comic book reading slackers who were ashamed to admit they still read comic books (remember when those were uncool?). When moving away from the chaos of nightclub venues and stripped-down headbanging, Clerks shows what these people were up to away from all that: just doing whatever to pass the time.

Smith dropped out of film school after just four months and his filmmaking process while making Clerks sort of reflects that; there is a vague understanding of the works of contemporaries like Steven Soderbergh and Richard Linklater, as well as a fondness for the black-and-white cinematography of classic films he’s no doubt seen, but he hasn’t quite nailed down the finesse that makes the true masterpieces he looks up to click. The camerawork and editing can feel clumsy, rudimentary, and amateurish. On the flipside, this arguably works to this film’s favor. The documentary/cinema verité styling adds to the slice-of-life approach, and gives viewers a different perspective to these characters than we could’ve gotten with more formal, ‘professional’ creative filmmaking behind the scenes.

The setup and ultimate payoff of Clerks is hilarious and insightful very much of the time but at the end of the day, it is also really darn depressing.

still courtesy of Miramax

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Gabe Guarin

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